1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to methods, apparatuses, and systems for reducing power consumption in a mesh network. The present invention also relates to a wireless communications program and a non-transitory recording media storing a wireless communications program.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the progress of wireless technologies, devices that have been connected using wires are increasingly connected wirelessly. For example, Ethernet networking technology according to the IEEE 802.3 standard has been the mainstream technology for local area networks (LAN). However, in recent years, wireless LAN connection technology according to the IEEE 802.11 standards has been adopted in increasing number of information communications devices. Wireless communications technologies, due to the high degree of freedom they offer, are expected to be used in realizing mesh networks that are dynamically configured.
Patent Documents 1 and 2 discuss route-search (“routing”) technologies for mesh networks. The technologies are discussed to be capable of minimizing the number of hops in a network. The technologies according to Patent Documents 1 and 2, however, do not take into consideration the power consumption by an entire network, and therefore do not attempt to overcome a problem of excessive power consumption in the network.    Patent Document 1: JP 2007-74564A    Patent Document 2: JP 2008-219526A